Friday 26 June 2015

The Status of Challenges of Vaccination in Developing Economies


Vaccination has conspicuously abated the spread of infectious diseases across the globe. However, the importance of vaccination, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries is exceptionally great, given the fact that the risks of contracting contagious diseases like Diarrhoea, Hepatitis, Typhoid etc. are alarmingly high in such economies.
The eradication of Smallpox and Polio are a stark reminder of the defensive power of vaccination against baneful communicable diseases in developing countries. However, despite such impressive achievements, a few seminal problems and challenges still remain unaddressed.

Common Challenges and Roadblocks
Economic Crises
The economic crises in developing countries act as the biggest deterrents on the way to maintaining the quality of citizens’ health. Owing to the depreciating currencies and lack of governing commitments,  the immunization coverage and people’s ability to avail of vaccines fall flat in many parts of such countries.

Unavailability of Vaccines
In many parts of developing countries, vaccines against some of the most common and communicable diseases like Typhoid, Malaria and Dengue still remain unavailable. The reason directly owes to infrastructural and logistical challenges. Also, the point explained in the preceding paragraph acts as one of the reasons.

Research Inhibitors
Despite the success rate of vaccination, the need to better the existing vaccines still remains a point of concern. Most of the current vaccines were developed by determining the components that consistently stimulated antibody responses in infected patients, and often without having a very detailed knowledge of the immune mechanisms required for protection. A lot of vaccines were simply formulated with aluminium hydroxide as the adjuvant and are administered by injection.
Although such approaches have been evidently effective in many cases, unfortunately, they have been proven completely inadequate for several important pathogens.

As it is, developing countries have weak surveillance, limited data on diseases, and poor scientific base which consequentially culminate into a major roadblock on the way to medical research. Hence, discovering better vaccines for diseases is still a distant dream for such countries. However, with a helping hand from developed economies and responsible corporate this situation can be addressed to a great extent. After all everyone deserves a shot at life!


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Hilleman Laboratories is a global vaccine research & development organization focused on making affordable vaccines using innovation to address gaps that exist in low resource settings. Hilleman Labs acts as a catalyst in bridging the gap between academic research and product development by targeting novel vaccines and increasing the efficiency of existing vaccines. Know More

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